Today’s topic is how to develop a power-washing marketing mindset, so that you can really start attracting the number of clients and, more importantly, the kinds of profits that you want and deserve in your business.

There is a lot of content here that I want to introduce to you; the best thing you could do is print this off and grab a highlighter and cup of coffee.

Discuss Marketing Internally

I want to start with internal thinking about power/pressure washing marketing ideas.

Most of the people that I specifically deal with daily are small power-wash business owners. Some of them have other jobs, meaning they have a lot of baggage when it comes to marketing and selling. You may relate to some of those thoughts.

When you come from a professional background it may be something like, “If you do a good job, you really shouldn’t be doing marketing. Your good reputation and your good results for clients should be enough to get you more business.”

Of course, that’s the biggest bunch of crap that anyone could have ever told you. That is simply not true.

Some people — and I was one of them for a long time — think of marketing as manipulative, as “salesy” and forcing people to do business through you, or flat-out lying to them about something that doesn’t exist just to get the check. To a certain degree, there is a possibility for manipulation in marketing strategies.

When I teach in-depth concepts in sales, specifically concepts on closing transactions, I often warn people that they are really powerful techniques.

If you’re a good person, you will use those techniques in the right way with a lot of honesty. If what you bring to the table is ill intent, then obviously you will use them for whatever purpose you want. I don’t like that!

There are a lot of great strategies and great businesses. If people tend to do bad things, then they’re bad people to start with.

Instead of having all those negative feelings with marketing, thinking that it doesn’t work for your particular situation or that because you have to market and actually ask for the sale, it is somehow a poor reflection on you or the quality of your services. I encourage you to shift into a different mindset.

Shift into a mindset that has more to do with your ability to reach and touch and help more people, whether you’re dealing with individuals as your customers, business owners, or corporations.

There’s always an opportunity to educate them and deliver value through your effective marketing. It’s based on education and letting them sample how much of a difference you can make for them without really being manipulative and salesy.

Create Leverage for Your Business

Another thing I want you to start thinking about throughout your marketing is you want to create leverage for your business.

You can’t afford to use strategies that hinge on one-to-one contact. At some point, if you want to build a highly effective and highly profitable power-washing business, you will simply run out of time to have that many meetings.

It’s much more effective to start looking into strategies that create leverage for you by introducing you to marketing strategists and allowing you to promote yourself from one to many. There are many different examples such as your eZine, workshops, joint venture strategies, direct mail and speaking opportunities.

You’ll typically want to limit your cold calls and networking events. They can be effective, but they’re extremely time-consuming. Frankly, for most people they’re very ineffective because, they just don’t know how to do it correctly.

Another concept I want to talk about very quickly is the fact that you have to start realizing that you are in two businesses.

You’ve probably heard me talk about this before. I want to cover it once again as we embark on this journey because this is a concept that truly changed my life and I know it can change yours.

Before I got into training, educating, or even talking to other power washers, I owned and worked for East Coast Powerwashing Inc. I’d hired consultants many times before I actually got into the business of teaching.

In my power-washing business, I was the king of effectiveness and cost-cutting (some call me cheap). What that means is when I brought consultants into my business; they often tried to pick my brain on how I structured things so that they ran so efficiently and effectively.

One of the first things consultants would look for was ways to stop unnecessary expenses. They were always amazed at how I was able to run a really tight ship. But then it dawned on me that you can only save so much. At some point, in order to grow, the only strategy is to bring in more money. If you don’t have enough, there is only so much you can cut. You have to start bringing in more money.

Your Businesses … Besides Power Washing

I first heard this concept that you are in two businesses from Dan Kennedy’s “Magnetic Marketing” years ago. First and foremost, you have to be in the business of marketing and selling before you can be in the business of power washing.

It completely turned around the way I looked at my business. It took me out of the operations and into marketing and sales. It took me out of working in my business, making sure we pinched pennies and everything ran extremely effectively.

That part is still important, but it took me into the business of working on my company, developing and implementing strategies that brought more customers in the door.

That ensured that we kept those customers for a longer period of time. It ensured that we could get them in the door more frequently. It ensured that they talked about us to all their friends and associates. That’s the type of focus you have to take in your business.

Another part of it is sometimes we get so married to our ideas that we forget there’s an audience out there that, unless we’ve satisfied them, teach them, and given them what they want, they will not want to buy from us. You have to really be responsible for shifting your ideas.

You have to have enough discipline and foresight, and be in touch with your audience so you can shift if you have to and ditch ideas that don’t work. Ditch ideas that are hard to implement and don’t prove to be profitable in a very short amount of time.

Once again, it’s so easy to fall in love with what you think people want. If they don’t want it, you can be forcing it down their throats for a long time to come and still have very poor results in your business.

Think Like a Business Owner — With Strategic Growth in Mind

The next concept I want to share with you is that you have to start thinking of your business like a business owner and not like a freelancer. It’s another big concept that made a big difference for me.

Here’s the difference. As a freelancer, you’re always thinking, “How can I sell the next product”? How can I get the next gig? How can I make the next few dollars? How can I pay my expenses and stay in business for another month?”

As a business owner, you are really much more focused on the strategic growth of your company. Your thoughts are shifting from, “How can I solve somebody’s problem?” The are movie to, “How can I build a machine that solves someone’s problem without me?” We’ll come back to this in-depth.

When you build a product or develop a service, you’re thinking about the long-term ramifications of what you are creating. What kind of infrastructure you can build to have that product or service delivered on an ongoing basis, with minimal or no involvement of your time and energy as you progress in building that business.

What strategies do you have to develop and continue to drive new customers and clientele to your business on an ongoing basis, in automatic and leveraged ways?

You have to start thinking about the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of delivering your power-washing services long term.

You have to start looking at how you can maximize the profitability from each client that you acquire rather than just getting one gig, depositing the check, and leaving.

Instead of launching a product, you want to launch a business. Instead of launching a service, you want to launch a company that delivers a service.

It always kills me when I hear people talk about their services. They talk about themselves in terms of what they do instead of in terms of what kinds of problems their businesses solve.

Instead of being a power washer, you should be the owner of a company that helps people maintain their image and helps them keep a healthy and happy home or business.

Job No. 1: Business Operator

You are a business owner first and foremost.

What comes with this is you have to start thinking about the value of your time. What I mean by that is I use a lot of freelance professionals. I know that you likely outsource some of your work to somebody else as well.

When people come and offer me their service for $10, $15, $20, or $30 an hour, and sometimes they are very skilled at what they do, it’s good for my business. I get to have some work done inexpensively. But it’s terrible for their business.

It has to do with the fact that at some time in your past, you might have been paid a certain amount of money for doing certain work. When you decided to go out and do it on your own, you figured if you just charged a little bit more than what you used to get paid per hour, you’ll now have a successful business.

Yes, you will now be a successful freelancer. But you will not have a successful business. You have to factor in the cost of acquiring customers, the cost of infrastructure that it takes to run your business, the cost of pressure washers and equipment, and the cost of insurances and medical expenses. These have to all be factored in when you’re building a business that’s designed to feed you and protect you.

You have to calculate all those fees and costs when you’re thinking about the value of your time. Keep in mind that every time you turn the key on the ignition of your vehicle it just cost you $95 plus.

In retail, you have a concept of buy low and sell high. The same thing should apply to your business.

Right now, you may be the only power washer in your company, so think about what would happen if you got sick or were unable to perform certain duties or tasks.

Could you bring in another power washer and pay them an hourly wage out of what you were charging your customers and still make a profit? That will give you a very good indication of how healthy your pricing is for your power-washing services. READ THAT AGAIN!!!

That also gives you an idea about what activities you should be focusing on in your power-washing business that are worth the kind of fee you want to generate for your time. Then you can think about outsourcing everything that can be done for less money to other people.

What Exactly Are You Selling Anyways?

The next thing I want to touch upon very quickly is the idea of what it is you are really selling in your business. This is actually very near and dear to my heart right now because it’s something I am working through in my company once again. I’m working through it in one of my niche markets.

What exactly is it that we’re selling to our customers?

I’m not selling my power-washing service. I’m not selling house washing. I am selling success. I’m selling pride and security, that feeling of “ah.” That’s what you’re buying when you come to me.

What are you selling?

Notice how you communicate with your customers. Are you saying things like, I am the best power washer, I have the best equipment, or I have been power washing for 20 years. It’s all irrelevant.

What is it that people would be willing to hire you and pay you money for? Dan Kennedy calls it selling money at a discount. Remember that people only take action for a couple of reasons. One is to get away from pain and the other is to gain pleasure. Usually, it’s harder to sell the gain pleasure concept unless you’re aiming for a higher, affluent clientele.

If you’re dealing with average, middle-class people, average-sized companies, or small-business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s typically easier to get them to act when you’re a selling a painkiller. If you help them get rid of their pain, that will motivate them to take action and actually work with you.

It’s a very important concept, what it is that you are selling. I like to talk about it in terms of solving other people’s problems profitably. If you really look at that sentence, it has a lot of content built right into it.

First of all, you have to know who those other people are. It can’t be just everybody. The more specific you get the more effective you will get in your business and in your marketing.

Going back to the sentence, solving other people’s problems profitably, who are those other people? What are their problems?

What makes them wake up or stay sleepless at night? What are their thoughts? What makes them worry most of their waking time? Are they thinking about not having a safe clean house to live in? Are they worried about what the neighbors are saying? Are they thinking about a serious health problem and what it might do to their financial situation and their family? Are they thinking about their relationship? Are they thinking about their problems on the job?

Are they thinking about having a lack of something in their life that may cause problems? Is it looming on the horizon? Are they really stressed about it? That’s what you need to address with your marketing message. That’s the problem you want to solve.

The solving profitably part has a lot to it, too. That has to do with what kind of power-washing business model you will build.

You get lucky. You solve somebody’s problem and get paid $200, but it cost you $400 to solve their problem. Obviously, that’s not a very profitable proposition. You can’t stay in business doing this. Or you might have made $1,000, but it took you a month to solve the problem. Once again, that’s not a very profitable proposition.

What’s the business model, the vehicle, or tool that you will use to address people’s problems, to solve those problems, and to make sure that you actually turn profit on the back end?

A lot of thinking needs to go into building your business and marketing machine before you even start putting your first promotions out there.

Several Points to Grow Your Power-Washing Enterprise

What I want to show next is nine specific traits that I think are important for you to really develop and master for yourself as a person — and to grow as a power-washing business owner.

I often talk about the concept that you can only grow your business as fast as you grow as a person. I want to show you nine things that I think are extremely important.

Every person I come into contact with that’s been effective in developing their business quickly and successfully, and who runs a profitable company, has mastered those skills or traits. Or they have surrounded themselves with people who can support them in the areas where they’re not particularly strong or are flat-out weak.

Have a clear vision of where you’re heading.

It’s so important, yet so few people do it.

If you are not crystal clear in what you want your business to look like when it’s complete, it’s so easy to get distracted. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by so many different ideas, possibilities, tactics, and opportunities that are just thrown your way on a daily basis.

Are you clear on what your role in your company will be when it’s completely built? Who else will be working in your company?

How big will your company be when it’s done? Maybe you want to stay a one-person power washer and just have one or two support people. Do you want to build a multi- million dollar, multi-unit company with hundreds of employees, managers, and VPs of different departments?

You have to know where you’re going so you can start looking for effective strategies, tools, and vehicles that will take you there.

Take time off regularly for private thinking time.

Disconnect from your business and your life. Take quiet time to envision the direction in which you’re heading.

For every single breakthrough in my business, I can think back to a time when I disconnected and managed to budget some private thinking time for myself. That allowed me to break through a specific problem, which allowed me to think bigger and more creatively. That then allowed me to get reconnected to the big picture of where I was heading with my business.

Having this vision is the first trait of a successful marketing mindset. The second characteristic or trait is having a plan. Vision is your goal or target. It’s where you’re going. The plan is your road map of how to get there.

So many people get distracted by so many different ideas because they don’t have a step-by-step action plan. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Have a vision, then have a plan.

Yes, there is room for course corrections as you go through and implement your plan, but at least the major stepping stones have to be there. Things like the types of services, the pricing, and the two, three, five, or six major marketing vehicles you’re going to employ to drive your first profits. Things like how the first systems will work in your business.

You have to have a plan.

How will you bring customers back? What additional power-washing services will you develop as your company grows?

What sorts of tools and vehicles will you use to drive traffic to your website, to generate lists, or to build a database of prospects and clients? How will you keep in touch with those people? How often will you keep in touch?

At least the key components, the basics, have to be there. You can always expand and add to it, but you have to have a good idea of how and what you will put in place to take you to your vision. That’s the second characteristic.

Keep focus on your goals, to stay on course.

The third characteristic is focus. This one is so important for all of us because one of the blessings for power-washing small-business owners is the fact that we are doers. That’s what makes us break out of the mold. That’s what makes us start our own companies.

That’s what drives us to get things done, to get the results, and to achieve. However, it’s also our biggest downfall and problem because we tend to do too much.

We tend to get overly creative and distracted by so many different possibilities. Just because we can do things doesn’t mean we have to do them. In our minds, we become superheroes and overachievers. We can get anything done that we can possibly think of. We get distracted by too many possibilities.

I see it in so many of people who’ll work half a day on one idea, half a day on another idea, and then the next half of a day on something else. Before they know it, they’ve spent a week, two weeks, a month, three months, or six months of working on different ideas every single day. Nothing gets completed. Nothing gets implemented.

You need this focus of staying the course, the focus in your vision, and the focus on implementing your plan.

Drive to break through barriers, instead of giving up.

Another element that comes right after focus is drive. Drive is almost persistence. It’s the ability to break through barriers as they come up instead of giving up.

It may seem like this makes sense, but think about situations or places in your business and life where you said you wanted to do something. But once you realized how much work it was, that it was going to be more difficult than you thought, you didn’t know certain parts or how to do things, you just gave up.

Your excuse was, it really isn’t what I wanted. That’s not true. It is what you wanted. You just gave up because you were lacking the drive. You were lacking the persistence to implement it.

Tap into an abundance of ideas, strategies, and resources.

One more component is abundance. In a way, this ties in with your focus.

What I mean by that is if you always believe there is enough business out there, that the information you need will be provided to you and you can freely find it when you need it, there is an abundance of ideas, strategies, and resources, it will free you to stay focused on things that you want.

One of the biggest distractions that many of us have to deal with right now is just an avalanche of information every single day.

Every day, an email lands in your box, a voicemail arrives on your phone, or a fax comes in and offers you something. It could be a new pressure washer for sale, a new tool, a better mousetrap, a better website, how to make more money with Google Ad Words, develop a better name squeeze page or drive a ton of traffic to your website.

They’ll say this is my way; everybody else is lying to you. Everybody else is telling you half truths. My way is the way. Of course their way is the way! They’re promoting their services and products.

What they’re not telling you is that because you have this scarcity mentality, you tend to jump on it and purchase. You think it won’t be there tomorrow. They’ll say, only the first 10, 50, 1,000, or 5,000, and then it’s gone. It is never true.

Unless you can implement the strategy and tactics you’re about to invest your money in right away, don’t buy it. Believe that it will be there when you’re ready for it. When you receive an email with a brilliant strategy, don’t be a packrat. Don’t print it out and stuff it into a big folder somewhere on your shelf-help space. Don’t stuff your email folders with it.

Let go of it. Believe that when you need it, when you are ready to take that step, when your plan calls for implementing such-and-such strategy, you need to know that information will be out there for you to easily find.

Don’t gather emails and information. Don’t purchase products and strategies that you cannot immediately implement.

I know that this is something not too many people talk about because this is what keeps information marketers in business. This is what allows them to sell you the next idea, breakthrough, or product.

I encourage you, if you can, to choose one or two people. Follow their recommendations. Implement, as fast as you can, everything that those people are teaching you.

For so many people who are in the power washing business for themselves, one of the biggest problems is fighting overwhelm feeling. The reason they create this overwhelm is because they don’t have the vision or the plan.

They don’t have the focus to stay on the plan. They get distracted because they don’t have the drive to stick with it. They have this scarcity mentality instead of having the attitude of abundance, that what needs to be provided to them will be there at the right time.

Don’t be like a fish and keep going after shinny objects, because like the fish, you will lose.

Be action-oriented. “Just do it.” Implement now, perfect later.

This characteristic is so critical. If you ever read any of my emails I talk about it all the time. It has to do with action. You have to be action-oriented. I know you’ve heard this so many times. So many people use it in their sales strategies. Action makes everything happen. It’s absolutely true.

Think about going to a seminar, buying a product, reading a brilliant strategy or reading a book that gives you a great idea of a strategy. Just learning about it doesn’t do any good unless you put it into action. It makes absolutely no difference to you.

Knowing about it doesn’t do anything. It’s using it that makes sense. It creates results. You have to be action-oriented. My wife Heather always tells me “just do it.”

I was always told that if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly to start with. Implement now, perfect later. If you’re not action oriented, you’ll always be in this analysis paralysis mode, stuck in a rut, not moving forward.

With marketing, there are often no clear-cut answers up front. You have to put something out there, let the market critique it for you, and give you feedback on it.

That doesn’t mean if you have a list of 20,000 people, you want a run a promotion to all of them at the same time and fall flat on your face. You can run a test to an audience of 1,000 people. I learned this the hard way. I sent out 8000 postcards that I thought were great and got a horrible response. I got the wrong size, had the wrong message on them and it cost me a ton of money.

You may have a smaller list and smaller audiences, but the strategies are still the same. Don’t market to everybody at the same time. Test in small batches and see what happens.

If you’re placing ads and creating strategies that you have to invest money into, test in small batches. Don’t spend $1,000 on an ad if $1,000 is all you can afford to risk and lose. Instead, spend $100 to test the ad and see if it works, then you can spend more and get more in return.

If you spend $100 and the ad totally flops, at least you still have $900 left of your budget to perfect that ad and test a little different version of it.

You always have to take action. You cannot be sitting there thinking, I don’t know, I placed this $1,000 ad, Will it work? Go around and start asking people questions. Start tweaking it. Ask around for some feedback. Facebook is a great place for this.

Often you have to put this strategy out there and let the audience, your target market, tell you if they liked it, if they responded to it, and if it will generate results for you or not.

You can follow some proven models. You can borrow some language from other ads, proven strategies and tactics, but ultimately you have to put it into action to see if it will work.

What you want to do is develop a habit, a way of thinking, and an attitude that you want to put something into action as quickly as you possibly can. I want you to write this down. “Money loves speed” Just put things into action and you will see what happens.

If it generates positive results and positive cash flow, then you keep tweaking, testing and improving upon it. If it doesn’t, then you have to really evaluate the opportunity.

Did it fail to create the results you wanted to create because you implemented it poorly? Was it just a flawed idea that will not work regardless of how much time, money, effort and energy you put into it?

You have to constantly be taking action on everything that you want to create, on all the ideas. If not, document your ideas. Keep a notebook.

I have a digital voice recorder I use. When I have ideas, I talk into it. I have a ton of ideas. Many of them are probably very good ideas, but do you know what? They’re not very good ideas for right now because I have other plans.

Those good ideas will only be a distraction. Documenting and/or writing them down allow me to stay free and focused on where I want to go at this time.

Have discipline to make your goals and your plan a reality.

Another characteristic is discipline. It’s the ability to do the things that need to be done when the initial excitement about the idea, tactic or strategy is gone.

Think about it in terms of signing up for a gym membership. It’s so exciting, especially at the beginning of a new year. Everybody runs to the local gym and says, I want to get into shape. This is the year I’m going to take care of my health. It seems like such a good idea, so we jump on it.

We spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on a gym membership only to completely forget about it in two weeks, three weeks or a month later. It just doesn’t feel good anymore.

There really is a myth, a half-truth or even flat-out lie that you can only do fun things in your business and ignore everything else. That’s not true.

When you build your business to a certain point, yes, you may have other people who will take care of the tasks you’re not particularly good at or don’t enjoy performing on a regular basis. You can outsource those to other people. But when you’re starting out, there are certain things that just have to be done.

If you don’t particularly enjoy asking people for the sale at the end of a presentation so you never do it, you will always go hungry. You might as well get better at doing it. Learn how to do it well. It’s two minutes of pain for an eternity of glory.

You have to be disciplined to do the things that need to be done when they need to be done.

It goes back to one of my previous points: having too many distractions, too many ideas, constantly reading new things from new people. Remember, most of the time those new ideas are little more than promotions for that particular person for you to eventually buy something else.

I know that this is something people don’t talk about because it kills their information businesses once you know it. But you have to know it in order to be successful. At some point, you have to stop the education and begin implementation.

Built support systems into your business.

One more characteristic is the ability to create support in your business.

Support really has three components. You have to have the right information, the right know-how, and the capability to do things. If you don’t, the support will be either somebody who will teach you how to do it or somebody that will do it for you. That’s the information.

The second component is accountability. Why is it that some people excel when they work for somebody else? Because they have the accountability factor. If they don’t perform, the boss is coming their way and they’re going to get fired. Pure fear drives them to do what needs to be done.

A little bit of fear isn’t bad. But how can you create an accountability factor for yourself when you don’t have a boss?

It might look like a Mastermind team, a closely-knit coaching group, a board of directors or board of advisor’s. Find three, four or five people who have successful businesses, who have success in areas where you want to achieve success. Ask them to meet with you on a regular basis, once a quarter or twice a year, and require you to give them an update on developments in your business.

If you force yourself to do something like this, then the thought of having to present to somebody what the newest and latest is in your business, and how far you’ve moved forward in the last 90 days or six months, sometimes will be enough to drive you to get the things done that need to be done. You simply don’t want to be embarrassed.

The fear that something bad might happen, you might look stupid or this person might think less of you, will drive you to get things done.

The third component in your support system is having people around you who believe in you. None of us are machines. We are human. We have all sorts of emotions. We get affected by what’s going on around us and by our results, to a lesser or greater degree.

When you put a lot of time into something and it doesn’t work the way you hoped it would, it’s easy to get discouraged. Sometimes we start doubting our own ability to create what we want to create. That’s the time to have cheerleaders around you.

The people closest to you like family members and friends, ex-coworkers or business partners are typically NOT the best cheerleaders. They’re typically the ones who try to drag you back.

It’s no reflection on you and your ability to do things. It’s just the way people are. When they see you moving forward, they have to make the choice to either catch up with you or stay behind. Staying behind is more comfortable. Their easiest choice is just to drag you down. They keep telling you, see, I told you it wouldn’t work. Why bother?

That’s why you need to have other people in place that will always say, it’s just temporary, don’t worry about it, don’t give up. Let’s reevaluate it and see what your next step should be. Just keep going. You can do it!

You’ve got to have the education/information component, the accountability component, and the pure cheerleading component of people who will have an undying belief in you and your ability to do what you want to do. The support factor is huge, don’t discount it!

Develop a very high-quality self-image.

The last area I want to cover is really about your own self-image. You have to continually work on improving your high, very healthy self-image.

I see this in working with people. I see it in working with groups. People that have already created success elsewhere and have a very healthy self-image tend to recreate that success in their own businesses very, very fast.

It has to do with things like what you expect. How much money do you expect to make out of your business? How much money do you expect your business to pay you every month, every week or every year?

When you need to get things done, who do you call? Based on your self-image, you will reach out, pick up the phone and contact a different person. If you have a very healthy, self-assured self-image, it will be natural for you to pick up the phone and call the right person.

Think about it in these terms. If Bill Gates needed to get a high-level strategic alliance with Virgin Atlantic, he wouldn’t call their support desk. He would call Richard Branson and say, Hey, I have this idea. Let’s kick it around.

In your business, who would you call if you needed to get things done? Are you calling a support desk? Are you calling the company janitor? Or are you calling the person you need to talk to because you treat yourself as that person’s equal? You want their attention, not someone else’s.

Your self-image has to do with putting value on your own time. What kinds of activities do you want to engage in on a daily basis? How do you treat your family and the people around you?

How do you treat yourself? Do you come first or does your business come first? That’s a very important distinction. You always need to come first. Your health, your self-worth.

If you work out of your home, how do you look when you sit at your desk? I used to dress poorly. I’d stay unshaven every single morning because no one else saw me. I finally realized that those things affect my way of thinking.

It’s different for men and women. Men tend to feel good when they do well. Women tend to do good when they feel good. There’s a prerequisite of feeling good. For us guys, we actually have to do something good in order to feel good.

You have to know yourself. What makes you feel good? What gives you the million dollar feeling that will drive you to decisive and effective action in your business?

Those were the Nine Traits of Effective Marketing Mindset for you as a person and business owner.

Three Specific Action Steps

I encourage you to go through this in detail. Go back through it with a highlighter.

Start asking yourself questions.

Is this something you just know, or is it something you practice? What would it look like if you were to truly implement those concepts and act on them? What difference might it make in your business and your life?

I want to leave you with three specific action steps for you to take based upon the concepts I’ve just discussed.

First, commit to keeping a time log for the next week. It’s a very simple idea. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just take out a notepad. Every single day, throughout the day, write down the activities you get involved in and how much time they take. At the very least, at the end of the day write down all the things you’ve done that day.

Do it for a week. Next week, take a look at it. You’ll be amazed at how many opportunities there are for improvement, how many time leaks you had.

Time just leaks through your fingers every single day. You’re wasting your most precious resource, your time, on things that you shouldn’t be involved in.

Your second action step is to clean up your inbox. We get so distracted by things that show up in our email, either invited or uninvited.

If you have a lot of spam, consider installing a spam filter. Consider getting a different email address if that’s what it takes. Look at all the information you subscribe to and ask yourself, do I really need to have this?

Depending on where you are in your business, you may still be in the mode where you’re educating yourself like crazy and reading everything there is to read. I want you to read with new eyes.

Ask yourself, Is this really a new concept that I’ve just discovered, or is this a new spin on an old story that’s designed to get me to move in a certain direction, buy certain products or get involved in certain ideas?

Reevaluate all the information that shows up in your inbox. Clean it up so that you only devote a minimal amount of time to that activity each day.

Reading and responding to your emails, in most cases, is not a money-making activity for you. The more time you put into it, the less time you have left to actually create results in your business.

The third action step has to do with a tool that you’re using right now, your telephone. We often become slaves to it. I want you to free yourself from that tool that’s stealing your time in two different ways.

One, let it ring. Let it go to voicemail. If it’s important, they will leave you a voicemail. Select a couple of times a day to pick up your voicemail and return your calls. Don’t let it interrupt your activity every time it rings.

Second, when you do talk to people, be very aware of your time. It’s easy to spend an unnecessarily long amount of time on the phone chit-chatting with people when the business you called about could’ve been conducted in just a couple of minutes.

You’re taking someone else’s time and robbing yourself of time that could have been used for money-producing activities, for strategic thinking, for building ideas and implementing them in your business to create leverage and boost your income.

Create a time log. Clean up your inbox. Free yourself from the distraction of your ringing phone. Those are your three action steps.

Be exceptional, be successful. 

God Bless,

Dan Galvin